


This is It

by Kitt_Monroe



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Angst, Canon Backstory, F/M, Gen, Spoilers for chapter 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:51:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitt_Monroe/pseuds/Kitt_Monroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when you know you're about to die? Reflect dramatically on your life, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is It

Welp. This is it.

That's all she could think as she heard Kuwata storm out of the bedroom, grumbling, seething to himself, and normally she wouldn't be listening to him, because why would she ever listen to anything someone that lame was saying? But it definitely helped her to listen to him right now, and what he was saying from the other side of the door ran somewhere along the lines of "You stupid bitch, I'll be back," over and over again.

This was it. She was pretty sure of that. That is to say, there wasn't really any other way this was going to happen.

Sayaka Maizono, despite the impression she might give off, wasn't a stupid girl, or even particularly naïve for that matter. And, as she lay against the shower wall, cradling her wrist and just now allowing the agony pulsing from said wrist to overtake the rest of body, she was pretty sure she could figure out what was going to happen to her over the next, say, two minutes:

She was going to keep lying here, unable to move for fear of further disturbing her right hand, waiting for Kuwata to return with the vengeance he pretty much deserved to carry around at this point. She was going to wait here, miserable and lost, until he came back with a method of getting the door open. It wouldn't be difficult--he had a toolbox in his bedroom, after all, and he wasn't _so_ lacking in common sense that he didn't know how to use a fucking screwdriver--and before she would have the chance to plead with him not to do this, not to go through with whatever was going on in his head, he would be in the washroom, more than likely brandishing the kitchen knife. There wasn't much she was going to be able to do after that. What would she do? Sing to him? Try to lullaby him out of it? Or would she go on the offensive and try to take the knife from him? Like that was even an option, when she could barely turn her own head without whimpering in pain.

How long would it be before Kuwata came back, she wondered. She pondered to herself whether he would hesitate, even once. Maybe, at some point during his journey to his room (or wherever else he thought to get the means to open the door), he would stop for a little while and ask himself whether he was doing the right thing. After all, he might realize, she's not even a danger to me now. I can just go back to my room and sleep and tell everybody she attacked me tomorrow, and then we can forget this whole thing.

Of course, it wouldn't be that simple. Once he was done thinking about that, the feeling of being attacked, of being a victim, would wash over him, and it would all be over. He probably wouldn't give another thought to what he was going to do. After all, he wasn't _that_ smart; he probably couldn't _afford_ to give it much thought.

She continued trying to distract herself from the withering pain in her wrist and in the various other places where Kuwata had managed to injure her. Eventually, a distraction came to her in the form of introspection. _May as well think about my life and everything I fucked up to get to this point,_ she decided.

She wondered whether thinking about her failed--no, seriously, it was a _failure_ \--childhood was fair game. Was that too much of a cliché? To think about how bad her childhood was? Because it certainly was bad, but she worried that if she brought it up (with herself, of course, since nobody else would be listening) she would become a stereotype, the tragically beautiful female lead in the romantic drama with the dark and troubled past.

Then again, most of those girls don't end up stabbed to death in a shower stall, so maybe her childhood was up for discussion.

If her mother was still around, said mother would probably be extremely disappointed to see her daughter in this position. "Tsk tsk, Sayaka," she would say. And she would pronounce it "tisk" too--she always did things like that. "Always getting yourself into trouble."

Of course, her mother _wasn't_ still around. Chalk that up to Bad Childhood Factor Numero Uno. Maizono didn't actually remember what disease her mom supposedly died of--cancer, maybe? No, she would remember cancer--but she remembered clearly that it left her remaining family with an enormous inheritance (no, seriously, imagine that Bill Gates guy from America? it was like half that).

It also left her father devastated. After his wife's death, Maizono's dad basically went to live at his job. She was lucky to see him once, twice a week. Ultimately, Maizono's mom's mom decided her son-in-law had become an unfit parent and took Maizono to live with her. Maizono wasn't sure her dad even noticed.

Call that Bad Childhood Factor Number Two.

There probably wasn't a number three, but two was plenty, thank you very much.

That's when television happened. Maizono remembered this clearly, her grandmother had this huge bigass TV, and Maizono would plop herself down in front of it every day after school and observe. Not just watch, but observe.

Her grandmother tried several times to get her to go out with friends, play outside, do anything really that wasn't watch TV all day, but Maizono would remain steadfastly in that cute little red reclining chair in the center of the living room, observing.

The thing she was observing was those girls. They were so perfect. Those actress girls with the beautiful singing voices and the flawless skin and the pearly teeth, who had their whole lives together, whose parents weren't dead _or_ emotional voids, who knew what they were doing and how to act and everybody loved them and why couldn't she have that?

Why shouldn't Maizono have that?

Back in the present moment, as she trained her ears on the world outside the washroom door to gauge when Kuwata returned, Maizono theorized that it was around the age of twelve that she began to create a persona for herself.

This persona was basically Maizono, but slightly better than her in every way: a little taller (even just a couple more inches would be fine), a little better at singing (which she had, by this point, taken to practicing frequently in the shower), a little bit prettier (she had a few too many freckles, in her opinion, to be truly magnificent), and just a little more charismatic (her entire school could attest to the fact that she wasn't exactly Sugar McHappysparkles). She would draw this person sometimes, wearing all manner of different outfits befitting one of those pretty actress girls. She would imagine this person doing all the things _those girls_ did: appearing on talk shows, stunning at red carpet events, commanding the attention of thousands of people in a stage audience.

Those girls were perfect, Maizono knew that. So if she could just be like them, then she would be perfect too, right? Little twelve-year-old Sayaka Maizono figured that maybe, in just another year or so, she could do it. She could be perfect. By then, she would probably have developed her attitude into something sweeter, she would probably know how to use make-up to cover her freckles, and she would probably be a masterful singer.

Okay, maybe she'd need singing lessons.

Her grandmother set jaws dropping throughout her old lady club for old ladies who have nothing to do with their lives by agreeing to pay for everything Maizono wanted to do. The singing lessons, the make-up, the talent agent, everything.

As a particularly intense jolt of pain shot through her arm, Maizono remembered specifically that she had never _once_ remembered to thank her grandmother for everything she did. Some idol she was.

Anyway, at this point Maizono decided to skip the boring stuff about the process she actually took in _becoming_ an idol because she could summarize the entire experience in four words, and those four words were being an idol sucked. It sucked bull testicles because it was always go here, do this, sign that, hug him, laugh at her joke, eat that weird mini-tree-stump-looking thing because Yuko Ando the journalist cooked it for you and I know she's a terrible cook but you have to eat it anyway.

Don't stop smiling. Look like an angel. Or better yet, like you're made of porcelain. Don't be bothered by the fact that you're only fourteen years old and grown men find you attractive. No, you can't go home to see your father and ask him if he's proud of you, why would you ask that. Never stop smiling, and no you can't quit you still have two years left in your contract, stop crying you need to keep smiling _keep smiling always keep smiling._

Eventually, Maizono forgot how not to smile. You know how your mom is always like "keep making that face and it'll be stuck that way?" Yeah, that actually happened.

She made friends. She made exactly four friends, and those were the other singers in her group. She knew all their full names, birthdays, favorites foods, favorite colors, and goddamn star signs, but she was pretty sure that all amounted to precisely nothing. Because it was obvious that Maizono was the breakout star of the group, and she was aware her friends probably loathed her for that.

But she stayed in the group (as opposed to leaving them for a solo career, which she and everybody on God's green earth knew she could easily do) and constantly tried to downplay how much more popular she was than them. That way, maybe the other four would let her keep being their friends.

It was only with maximum perseverance and no small amount of lip biting and side-to-side swaying that she was able to convince one of the record executives to let her basically take a year off to go to Hope's Peak Academy. It would be great for publicity, she assured him, and the fact that one of his idols was accepted to the most prestigious high school in Japan would no doubt shoot funding through the roof and put the record company in every magazine every week for months.

Isn't it funny how things turn out? One moment, you're twelve years old and watching TV and admiring a bunch of actresses, and the next thing you know a terrifying bear thing is telling you the only way you can leave your own high school is by murdering one of your fourteen classmates and getting away with it.

Don't wanna murder anyone? Well what if your being at school has caused your singing group to disband because they're so unsuccessful without you they didn't even last a week after you left? Oh, and they're probably injured in some way, and obviously they're not your friends anymore. They never really were.

 _You have no friends, Sayaka Maizono,_ she told herself, the same way she had just after seeing Monobear's motivational DVD.

As Maizono began to fully appreciate how uncomfortable she was, sitting against a tile shower wall with no hope of trying to adjust her position without writhing in blinding pain, wondering if Kuwata was ever actually going to come back or if she was just going to sit here all night with a broken wrist and a bruised everything else until she probably cried herself to sleep--as she did all that, she decided to go back over today's events to see where it had all gone so horribly, majestically wrong.

Obviously, the DVD was what started it. But what was it after that that had killed all her hours of planning? Had she maybe chosen a bad time to invite Kuwata over? Should she have told him to come over earlier when it was less suspicious? Later, when he would be more exhausted and easier to kill? Or maybe Kuwata altogether was the wrong person to try to murder--as dumb as he was, he was _still_ a professional athlete, and she probably never had a chance of overpowering him. Maybe she should have chatted with him first, made him let his guard down, instead of immediately going for the kill.

She felt a shiver pass through body--honestly, what temperature was it in this washroom?--and tried several times to force herself to admit the real reason her plan had failed.

She didn't want to do it.

There it was, plain and simple. She could do the plotting, she could take care of the set-up, she could even go through with actually rushing at Kuwata with the knife bared, but she could never have done it for real. She could never have killed him, or anyone else for that matter.

Oh Jesus Lord, Naegi. She suddenly remembered that the Super High-school Level Good Luck boy was probably sound asleep in Maizono's bedroom. And, unless Kuwata really chickened out, Naegi was going to have to deal with finding Maizono's dead body in his shower, and in no way being able to explain how it got there.

There were things Maizono was willing to do, and things Maizono was willing to let happen. She had once gotten a rival singer stupid drunk and posted a video of said singer's drunken antics on the Internet, thus ending said singer's career swiftly and without any hope of revival. She had once supervised the dressing of an actress from a competing network for a major awards ceremony, and allowed said actress to walk on stage with her dress unzipped. These were things she was willing to do to further her own career.

But she was not going to sit her and die and let Naegi take the blame for it. Naegi, who obviously cared about her and would give anything to protect her. Sweet, average, goofy Naegi, who was pretty much the most unsubtle person who had ever had a crush on her (and believe her, she had had a _lot_ of unsubtle people with crushes on her).

It was possible, Maizono supposed, that she liked him too. She had certainly done everything she could to make him _think_ she liked him, and...after all, they say you're a better actor when you're playing a part you really believe. Wouldn't that be the perfect movie story, if they were to be a couple after having known each other in junior high? No, seriously, the script wrote itself.

She realized she was thinking in terms of a movie. How pathetic was that? That the only way she could picture being someone's girlfriend was if it was like you see on TV? She knew there was something much deeper to the way he felt about her (and the possible, maybe sort of way she felt about him) that was a lot more difficult for her to describe, because...well, she had never _had_ a real relationship. That was another one of the rules of being an idol: no relationships.

It was things like how he hadn't pushed her away when she buried her face in his chest. She hadn't really rehearsed doing that; it just seemed like the natural thing to do when she felt so frightened about Monobear's DVD. He hadn't pushed her away, he had just kept telling her it would be okay. It was things like how she had suddenly found herself able to not smile around him. She had forgotten how not to smile, but when she was around him, she could just be so much more natural.

It was things like, no matter how ridiculous she got and how genuinely miserable she was about the idea of losing her idol friends, he kept telling her he would keep her safe.

...He was going to keep her safe, that's right.

She hated him for a second--only a second, but she hated him so badly. _What happened to that promise, Naegi-kun?_ she demanded of nobody in particular. _What, you can't be bothered to wake up, somehow realize I'm in trouble, and come to my aid like you're supposed to? That's what the hero does, isn't it?_

She was being irrational, but she kind of deserved to be irrational in this situation.

...It didn't make him any less special, though. She didn't really want to say she loved him or even really wanted to be his girlfriend, because she didn't know enough about either of those things to know whether she really wanted that...but if she was ever going to be in love with someone, she felt like Naegi was a good candidate for that.

But regardless of their relationship, Naegi didn't deserve to go down for her murder, and Kuwata certainly didn't deserve to go free for it. So she decided to save him, somehow. Somehow, she needed to find a way to let everyone know Naegi wasn't behind what was going to happen her. Maybe, if she did that, she could try to find some kind of peace with her current situation. Maybe, if she gave the rest of her life to protect him somehow, that would count as some kind of penitence, and all the bad stuff she had done would be okay.

She knew she didn't deserve to think like that. Here she was, having just a few minutes ago prepared to commit an honest-to-God murder, and she was trying to make herself feel good about it by saving Naegi? She knew that didn't make her a good person, but she had to at least try and shit shit shit shit shit that's footsteps he's coming Kuwata's coming.

She started crying instantly. "Please God, no, please, no please God..." she whispered to herself, and she knew that it was really a little late in her life to start being religious but she didn't care.

She heard the sound of metal turning against metal and realized he was undoing the screws on the doorknob.

Her wrist hurt so much. She didn't even notice it.

Her entire attention was focused on the door, and the door was opening and Kuwata was standing there in the doorway and yeah of course he was still holding the knife, why wouldn't he be?

"Leon..." she whimpered. He had no answer.

He kind of just stood there for several seconds, his face twisted into an expression of rage and misery and desperation all compounded into one horrid emotion.

Any minute now.

 _I'll put his name on the wall,_ she decided. _But I can't let him see it, or he'll get rid of it._

He swallowed. She held his gaze.

She breathed. His breath hitched.

She thought about Naegi, dozing in her bedroom. He turned the knife around in his hand so the blade was pointing downward.

She thought about her idol friends, who weren't really her friends. He swallowed again.

She thought about her real friends here at school, who had no idea what was going on.

His frame moved.

She closed her eyes.

This is it.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I might have laid it on a little thick with the melodrama, and I know I embellished a lot with Maizono's backstory, but I hope you still enjoyed it! Thank you for reading.


End file.
